The Charge

The Case

With the number of Mystery Science Theater 3000 collections rapidly
approaching the number of Super Bowls, Volume XXX delivers another
four-episode fix for jonesing MSTies.

Volume XXX kicks off with The Black Scorpion, the set's lone
Joel entry, and the last Season One episode to get a home video release. (That's
right, fans—the dream of a full season MST set is a reality! For those who
own two hard-to-find Rhino releases, anyway.) This '50s giant insect movie isn't
great, but it's got a few things going for it. Unlike the bulk of B monster
movies, Scorpion ("I wonder if that
thing could plow a driveway") was filmed on location in Mexico rather than
on a studio backlot. It also boasts stop-motion creature effects by Ray
Harryhausen's mentor, Willis O'Brien. The beasties are so cool they even earn a
sincere shout out from Joel. If only they were in a better movie. Season One
episodes have a reputation for being slower than later seasons, but Black Scorpion showcases the charming
chemistry of the original SoL crew. Good on Shout! for ignoring grumbling fans
and continuing to release Season One episodes. I'll miss them.

The rest of the set focuses on later seasons. From Season One we jump to
Season Five's Outlaw (of Gor)—a Peabody Award-winning episode
highlighted at special MST live college events back in 1994. Twenty years later
it's easy to see why the episode is so popular. Outlaw is a Cannon International sequel based on
a long-running series of fantasy novels written by John Norman, about a
professor who is transported to an alternate dimension of loincloths, warriors,
scantily clad maidens, and Jack Palance wearing a spectacular "split-top
butter-top hat." The skimpy costumes and buffalo shots inspire Mike and the
bots to song with the classic, "Tubular Boobular Joy."

Volume XXX's first Sci-Fi Channel episode is the Season Nine opener
The Projected Man, which marks Mike and the bots return to orbit around
present day Earth, and the beginning of Pearl's stay at her family's ancestral
castle. The movie is a stuffy mix of science fiction and horror—the story
of British scientists working on a matter transporter that turns into a monster
movie when the lead scientist uses the machine on himself, with disastrous
results. Like Gorgo, from a previous set, the
bulk of the jokes take aim at England ("India must be so embarrassed to
have been ruled by these twits").

The final episode is Season Ten's It Lives By Night ("Well,
maybe it shouldn't drink so much coffee!")—another slow-paced
movie about a guy changing into a monster. In this case, a man on his honeymoon
is attacked by bats in a cave and then very gradually turns into some sort of
murderous bat creature. In lieu of actual scares, the bulk of the movie is a PSA
for rabies set against the rugged peaks and bushy mustaches of a '70s ski
resort. The final third tries to be a game of cat and mouse between the bat-dude
and a sleazy small-town sheriff, but it's mostly a mess that builds to a lame
twist ending that just kind of gets caught in the movie's hair and then flutters
off into the night.

The presentation and packaging is in line with previous Shout! MST
sets: full screen video and 2.0 stereo audio, with four individual discs and
Steve Vance mini-posters housed in a handsome slipcover case that will look nice
next to the rest of your MST sets. The episodes themselves represent
another good, if Mike-heavy, selection from across all ten seasons. It satisfies
in every area but one: the bonus features. Compared to the bare-bones Rhino
sets, Volume XXX is an embarrassment of riches. Compared to the stellar
job Shout! Factory has done in previous collections, creating and curating
extras about the show and the movies, Volume XXX is a step back.

On the plus side, all but one of the included bonus features are about the
movies. I've long said that the best thing Shout! does in these MST3K
sets is to pay tribute to the riffed films with informative documentaries about
the people who made them and their place in movie history. "Bad"
movies don't just appear out of nowhere for the purpose of being mocked by a TV
show. They are the result of well-intentioned people having little time and less
money to create something that will make money for other people. As a movie fan,
I want to hear those stories.

• The Black Scorpion disc comes with a theatrical trailer
(2:07) and "Stinger of Death: Making The Black Scorpion"
(12:32), a featurette that explores Warner Bros.' run of killer insect movies of
the '50s, the movie's director and actors, and Willis O'Brien's creature
design.

Outlaw has the most bonus features, dividing about 26 minutes of
making-of material into three parts:

• In "Writer of Gor: The Novels of John Norman"
(12:43), the author's agent and publisher, Richard Curtis, gushes about the
massive fantasy series. Curtis is hugely complimentary of the Gor novels, which
gets a bit icky when he launches into a defense of Norman's "artistic"
use of eroticism, in particular the "natural" way that willing female
characters submit to their male masters.

• "Director of Gor: On Set with John 'Bud' Cardos"
(6:29): The elderly director recollects his experience as a sci-fi director,
brought in at the last minute to take over from the director of the first
Gor film. "It was an okay picture…It wasn't my cup of
tea." He's not alone.

• "Producer of Gor: Adventures with Harry Alan Towers"
(6:51): Production manager Danny Lerner talks about Towers—including a
tantalizingly brief mention of his past as a Russian spy—the pros and cons
of shooting in South Africa during Apartheid, and his experiences with Palance
(who was there to "collect a paycheck") and Oliver Reed (who was
"most of the time drunk").

• The Projected Man comes with a trailer (1:29), and the
making-of doc "Shock to the System: Creating The Projected Man"
(3:52). There are some interesting tidbits here about the film and its
production issues, but the problem is that film historian Tom Weaver rushes
through the story like he's late for dinner. It's distracting, and annoying, and
I don't know why anyone thought this was good enough.

• The only extra for It Lives By Night is an
"extended" trailer (1:14) for Trace Beaulieu's short film "The
Frank." It looks funny. I just wish it wasn't the only extra on this
disc.

I feel bad complaining about the relative lack of bonus features for
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXX, considering the set delivers
four more great episodes. It's hard not to, though, when the total runtime of
all the extras is barely longer than just one of the documentaries produced for
previous collections. In the old days, four episodes and a handful of extras
were enough for fans. Hopefully it still is.